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Americans who thwarted French train attack are childhood friends

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler often played military games together growing up

AFP/Getty Images

Off-duty US Air Force Spencer Stone, one of the men to overpower the gunman who opened fire with an assault rifle on a high-speed train, leaves the hopistal of Lesquin, northern France on Saturday.

By

JimCarlton

The three American men whom French authorities credit with disrupting a potential terror attack on a Paris-bound high-speed train Friday are childhood friends who had all attended California’s Freedom Christian School and often played military games together growing up.

Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guard member Alek Skarlatos and college student Anthony Sadler were tourists trekking through Europe on a planned three-week vacation. They will return home as decorated heroes, following a scheduled visit with French President François Hollande at Élysée Palace, after authorities say they bravely took down a man they say was armed with boxcutters and several guns.

Airman Stone’s mother, Joyce Eskel, said her 23-year-old son told her he was sleeping on the train when he was suddenly awakened by the sound of crashing glass in his train car.

According to Sadler’s father, his son told him that a conductor had run to the back of their train car to try to subdue a man coming out of a restroom with an automatic Kalashnikov rifle, but was unable to stop him.

Airman Stone and Skarlatos, 22, rushed the gunman, followed by Sadler, Sadler’s father said. Skarlatos took the automatic weapon from him before he could fire it, as the gunman attacked Airman Stone with a box cutter.

He stabbed Airman Stone “multiple times” in the back and severed a tendon and nerve on one hand, Airman Stone’s mother said. He also pulled out a handgun and put it to Airman Stone’s head during the struggle, pulling the trigger twice.

“But it clicked twice and didn’t go off,” Eskel said, relaying what her son had told her.

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